Let's protect free speech for all...not just the Left

I'VE SPENT the past couple of weeks trying to whip up support for Nigel Farage in his battle against woke British banks.

- Toby Young

Closing people's accounts for expressing the "wrong" views is a brutally effective type of censorship that originated in Communist China and has no place in a supposedly free country like ours.

My first thought was to create a meme based on the old advert for the National Lottery.

A giant hand holding a pair of rainbow-coloured scissors would emerge from a high street bank.

Then it would cut up the credit card of an unsuspecting member of the public, with the caption: "It could be you!"

But I realised this wouldn't capture the threat posed by this sinister new form of cancel culture because not everyone is equally at risk. The people most in danger of losing their accounts are those with unfashionable views, whether it's the former leader of the Brexit Party or Richard Fothergill, a Church of England vicar who was de-banked by the Yorkshire Building Society after he objected to its promotion of trans ideology.

I think that's why almost no one on the Left of British politics has taken Nigel's side in this dispute.

So far, broadcasters Paul Mason and Emily Maitlis, Remoaner propagandist Alastair Campbell, Labour's Rachel Reeves and comedian Omid Djalili have defended Coutts's decision to defenestrate the GB News presenter.